PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 An embattled charter school in Port Richmond is closing next week, and the School District of Philadelphia is preparing to run it again.<\/p>\n
The last day of classes at Memphis Street Academy charter school is June 12. In the fall, it will reopen as the district-run Memphis Street Middle School. <\/p>\n
In 2012, the district converted what was then John Paul Jones Middle School into a charter under its Renaissance Schools Initiative. In 2022, the Philadelphia School Board voted<\/a> to execute a surrender clause<\/a> in the charter because of poor academic performance. <\/p>\n Charter operator American Paradigm sued the district in federal court but lost, and was denied on appeal. CEO Ashley Redfearn said the school\u2019s 56 employees have been offered positions at the organization\u2019s three other Philly schools. <\/p>\n She said the school, which serves 500 fifth- through eighth-graders, plans to continue providing community services, including a health center and food programs, for as long as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThe least amount of disruption is really important,\u201d she said. \u201cFamilies don\u2019t have a lot of capacity for more stress in their lives.<\/p>\n \u201cWe still care and we\u2019re going to be there as much as we can. And when it\u2019s time for us to move aside, we\u2019re going to do it respectfully and professionally.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, the district said it is collaborating with Memphis Street Academy on the transition process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 An embattled charter school in Port Richmond is closing next week, and the School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17299,69,71,70,26503,521,1998],"class_list":["post-211717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-charter-school","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-port-richmond","tag-school","tag-school-district-of-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}